Amends
by Dipenates
Summary: When Greg's first boyfriend appears in Las Vegas, his reason for being there provokes some soul-searching. Nick/Greg.
1. Chapter 1

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**1998, San Francisco **

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* * *

**

He helped her in the window, even though she could have gone to the front door. Her parents might have freaked out if someone rang the doorbell after eight o'clock but his parents wouldn't have raised an eyebrow at a 9.30 pm visitor.

One of her sneaker-clad feet caught the penpot sitting on the desk, as she clambered over it, and she winced as fibre-tipped pens and pencils were strewn across its surface.

"Fucking _Dawson's Creek_," Greg said, but there was no bite in his tone. "Encouraging all these teenage girls to go about the neighbourhood crawling in boys' windows."

She raised a darkly-pencilled eyebrow. "As if I'd watch that lame shit."

"Amelia," Greg mock-chastised. "I don't think that's the kind of language a lady should be using."

And she smiled, then, and flopped down on Greg's bed next to him.

For all that they were best friends - _best friends' for-evah _he could almost hear her say, sarcastically – there were some topics of conversation that it was impossible to broach with Amelia. The exactly flavour of _fucked up _of her family, for one. He'd been to her house a few times the previous year, when they'd been assigned to work on an English Literature paper together in one of Mr Morris's lame attempts to get people to mix out of their cliques. Even before her parents had realised that he was gay, the very air in their overly tidy house had vibrated with tension. Her father was, hands down, the most scarily austere man that Greg had ever met and her mother was like a woman carved out of ice. The oppressive atmosphere told in the pale pinch of Amelia's face that wasn't there when she was sprawled across Greg's duvet.

She also refused to talk about school. She had been friends with the same group of girls through middle school and the first year of high school but something had happened that meant she'd spent most of sophomore year alone. Greg had seen her walk past Lizzie, Jane and Katy in the corridors and it was like they had never been a tight foursome that wore matching dresses to their sixth grade dance and colonised the table at the back of the library to work on their shared plans for world domination.

"Everything ok?" Greg's tone was carefully noncommittal.

Amelia shrugged. He could almost set his watch by the amount of time it took her to relax once she was safely installed on his bed. Ten minutes after she'd clambered in his window, or sometimes been shown into his room by one of his parents, her shoulders dropped like whatever was jacking them towards her ears had suddenly gone away.

He changed the subject. "Can we go out this weekend?"

Amelia bit her lip. "I only stayed over two weeks ago."

Greg sighed. "Your parents _know _that your virtue is safe from me."

"That's not it."

He looked at her. "So what is it?"

"I can't—. They don't like—." She looked at her hands in her lap. "I'll figure something out."

Greg looked at her pale face. "Awesome."

He slid _My Own Private Idaho _into his VCR and Amelia crossed one cargo-panted leg over the other. He sat back against the enormous pillow that he'd propped against the wall, so that their shoulders were touching. She leaned slightly into him.

The movie started, but he wasn't really paying attention.

* * *

Greg was pretty sure that there were other, scenier places that he and Amelia probably could have made it into, even with their lamentably bad fake IDs. But she liked the all night coffee shop, with its tattered band flyers lying on all the tables and posters lining the walls for club nights they probably couldn't get into.

His mother had dropped him off on the way to a dinner with her editor. Amelia's mother worked full-time in their home and she had once asked him if he wished his mom did the same. He had blinked at the question because Dr Astrid Hojem, love him though she did, was a Berkeley Law professor who specialised in human rights and international law, and that fact was as inextricably _her_ as the taste of her infrequently made peanut butter cookies.

(When he'd come out to her she'd been sitting behind her immaculately tidy desk in her immaculately tidy study, clad still in her professional uniform of sharply tailored suits and stockings that swished like the hiss of rain on blacktop. She had smiled, fondly, as if he was telling her something she had already been apprised of and two days later he had been walking past her study when she'd called him in and presented him with some shiny books on adolescent homosexuality and condoms.)

He had always been told that his father was just as brilliant but to Greg he was so much fuzzier round the edges than his coruscating mother that it barely seemed plausible.

(When he'd come out to his father they'd been standing in the kitchen while his father made himself a cup of tea. He'd been reading the proofs for his latest book with a pen in one hand and Greg had to repeat himself twice before Matthew Sanders' gaze sharpened on him and he seemed to take in what Greg was saying.)

Amelia glanced up from her coffee and the flyer for a gig that she had been checking out and then executed a perfect double take. She looked at Greg, eyes bright. "That guy is totally checking you out."

**

* * *

Now, Las Vegas **

* * *

"Andy called." Nick frowned at the answering machine.

"Andy who?" Greg was still struggling in the door with an armful of grocery bags.

"Andy your ex-boyfriend who. He's in town and he wants to meet up tomorrow night."

Greg put the bags down and hit the answerphone button with his finger.

"_Hi, this is a message for Greg. It's Andy. Andy Williams. Um, I'm in Las Vegas and I wondered if you would be able to meet up with me for a coffee or something. It's, um, Monday right now and I wondered if you were free Tuesday night. It's kind of important."_

_Kind of important. _The words seemed to echo in Greg's chest. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.

He'd been thinking in the supermarket how happy he was. Watching Nick choose vegetables, of all things, had elicited an almost physical rush of affection for his partner and contentment with their shared life together. Their new house. Their relationship. The fact that he was getting out more in the field. That moment seemed like unimaginable hubris now; less like counting his blessings and more like gloating over his good fortune.

Nick's eyes were anxious as he looked at him. "Do you think—?"

Greg had heard so many people talk about these kind of phone calls. _God. _He shook his head. "If it's that then you know we're ok, don't you? I mean, I've been tested at least twelve times since Andy and I split up."

Nick wrapped his arms around Greg. "I know those tests are damn near 100 per cent accurate. I just know that Andy was important to you."

"Yeah." Greg's voice was bleak. "First boyfriends always are."

"Damn straight," Nick whispered into his neck and Greg's stomach lurched.

* * *

Greg fiddled with his fork.

Nick glanced at him. "Is the risotto too dry? We only had enough stock cubes to make the exact amount that the recipe called for, but it's never enough. I added some white wine, but it's not the same, is it?"

Greg smiled, perfunctorily. "It's great, babe. It's just—."

Nick put down his own fork. "I understand." He covered Greg's hand with his own. "Would it help to talk about him? I mean, I don't even know how you guys met."

"Wouldn't that be weird for you?"

Nick snorted. "I think my fragile ego can cope with hearing about the boyfriend that you had when you were 15."

"We met at a coffee shop."

Nick raised his eyebrows. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Greg felt like he was standing astride two tectonic plates as they shuddered and scraped along one another; his two lives colliding in an unpleasant burst of noise and sensation.

He pasted on a grin. "Yeah, some things never change."

But they had changed. Things.

* * *

He'd called James Wilkes after Nick had fallen asleep on the sofa, because Nick was pure and untainted but Greg had spent more nights than he should have gasping in the bathrooms of clubs with some stranger's hand in his pants or head in his fly. Spent so many hours in bed with men whose second names he didn't even know – and sometimes their first names escaped him in the morning - and he needed the sound of James's voice in his ear to reassure him that this wasn't cosmic payback.

"Wilkie?" His voice was shaking.

"Sanders? Is that you? Everything ok?"

Greg could almost picture James in his office at the GLBT centre, propping the phone on one shoulder as he raked through his messy desk looking for some essential file or piece of paper.

"I got one of those calls from an ex." He let the silence tell the rest of the story.

James paused. "Did he say he was positive?"

Greg shook his head before he realised that James couldn't see him. "No. Just that he had something important to tell me and that he was in Vegas and wanted to meet up."

James paused again, and Greg realised, belatedly, that the fact they'd hooked up would mean that this was important news for James, too.

"You guys weren't safe?"

Greg sighed. "Not all the time. I was a horny teenager. We got together when I was 15."

He could almost see James frown. "And how old was he? I mean, how realistic was it that he would have been positive when you guys were together?"

Greg swallowed. "He was older."

There was a longer pause this time.

Greg's chest felt like the air had been squeezed out of it. "Wilkie, do you think there's any risk?"

James cleared his throat. "Almost certainly not. You've been tested, right?"

"Yeah, at least once a year while I wasn't in a relationship. And I've been safe. Or as safe as possible since I split up with Andy." He tried to find the words. "But there have been a lot of guys."

He could almost hear James's relief humming down the phone line and realised that he should probably have explained this in a way that didn't make his sometime fuckbuddy totally lose his shit.

"Greg, you know that it's vanishingly unlikely that you've been tested multiple times and had false negatives each time?" His voice softened. "And that whatever happens you don't deserve to be sick, right?"

Greg felt tears prickling behind his eyelids. "Yeah, I'm being crazy. It's just that I'm such a whore and Nick isn't and we stopped using condoms a while ago and I would fucking kill myself if I put him at risk."

"How's Nick handling this?"

"He's asleep already." Greg fiddled with the phone. "He knows how reliable those tests are. I was just— I mean, _somebody _has to be that 0.00004 per cent who gets a false negative."

"If you want, you can call me after you speak to your ex, Greg. I know a lot of people who can help if it's bad news. Even expediting another test to confirm your first results."

"Ok." Greg bit his lip. "I'll do that. Thanks, Wilkie."

"Sleep well."

_Yeah, right. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks:** To Podga for the fast, accurate and discerning beta read. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

**

* * *

**

**Then, San Francisco **

* * *

_July, 1996_

The bass was reverberating in the alley outside Chaos in a way that would have made Greg's pulse start to beat faster even if it hadn't been his first date with Andy. _First date. _Probably that wasn't even what this was, but Amelia had been calling it that all afternoon, and if that had been a little bit too John Hughes for his tastes, then he'd been glad of her standing in his bedroom with her arms akimbo, trying to pick out the things from his teenage wardrobe that might pass as something people wore to clubs.

He did his best to smother the kid-at-Disneyland grin on his face and retain some semblance of cool. Andy and he had talked about bands and music for an hour at the coffee shop before Andy had written his number on a flyer and given it to him, but they'd barely exchanged a dozen words since they met outside the club.

Andy seemed to be on nodding terms with about quarter of the men that were queuing with them though, and it might just be the three espressos he'd drunk before sneaking out his bedroom window, but he felt like he'd just been given associate membership of to a secret society.

The queue was moving fast and Greg felt his excitement build until finally they were inside and the music was pounding in his chest cavity and all along his spine.

And the way Andy looked at him made him feel two parts awkward and gangly but one part something nicer, and then Andy kissed him and pushed a foul tasting pill into his mouth with his tongue and a half hour later the night got very good indeed.

(Years later, what he remembered most about his first bump of ecstasy was trying to explain it to Amelia. The words had spilled out of him, and he wasn't explaining it right; the chills of pleasure that shot up his neck while the music ghosted over his skin. Talking about how much he had truly loved everyone in that club and _her, _even though she wasn't there, and Andy, of course.

And she'd looked at him and, blushing furiously, had asked him what they'd done afterwards. They didn't usually talk about sex but somehow she knew words that he would never have imagined and he tried to explain how they'd done some stuff, but not everything. She was quiet then and something made him want to ask her if she thought it was ok, but he didn't know which words to use and the moment slipped away.)

* * *

_August, 1996_

What he liked most of all was to lie in Andy's bed, on Andy's white cotton sheets, while the sun streamed through the windows of Andy's apartment.

His parents' coffee was pretty great but Andy's was something else and it made Greg feel like one of the models in the style magazines that were stacked on Andy's coffee table when Andy brought him coffee in chic cups on a breakfast tray.

That morning though, Greg's legs were tangled in sweaty sheets that smelled unmistakeably of tequila, and the sweet, noxious smell of metabolised alcohol hung in the air.

The previous night Greg had told Andy how old he really was; that instead of being a summer away from college, as he'd let Andy believe, he was about to be a high school junior.

Andy had looked at him with a half-smile, as if he was waiting for a punchline to a joke that didn't seem like it would be very funny. When he realised that this was actually happening, he'd gone to the cupboard he kept his liquor in and pulled out the Jose Cuervo, roughly pouring some into two shot glasses. When Greg picked up his, Andy had reached for it before cutting the gesture off.

"I guess you _drinking _is the least of our problems."

Greg had just looked at him.

Andy had rubbed his eyes. "I'm contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

"I'm 16. I'm old enough to do lots of things." He hadn't mentioned that he wouldn't be sixteen for two weeks.

Andy had put his arm round his shoulders. "But not this. I feel like Uncle-fucking-Pervy."

Greg had pushed his arm away. "Are you saying I'm a stupid kid who doesn't even know what he wants?"

Andy had looked at him carefully. "_Is _this what you want?"

Greg had thought about how Andy always talked to him like his thoughts and opinions mattered. How he made Greg feel like there were real choices and options beyond the narrow constraints of high school. How cool Andy was. How much he liked the feel of Andy on his skin.

"Yes." Greg's voice had been certain. "It absolutely is."

* * *

_October, 1996_

It had been an almost perfect day. Greg loved browsing around the Haight with Amelia, but shopping with Andy had been a million times better. Amelia couldn't get enough of books but had no patience for record shopping, and Amoeba Records was one of Greg's favourite places on earth. Andy had flipped through the racks with a look of concentration that made Greg feel like he wasn't a total pain for wanting to stay there for so long.

He'd picked up a Mudhoney EP on coloured vinyl that he really wanted, but the price was too steep if he and Andy were going for lunch. He'd slipped it back, behind some other stuff, and Andy had raised his eyebrow.

"Are you not going to get that? You've been admiring it for five minutes."

Greg shrugged. "Maybe next week."

Andy had reached for his wallet. "Let me."

But Greg had shaken his head and, after studying him for a moment in puzzlement, Andy had slipped his money back into his back pocket.

(When Andy had given him the EP for Christmas he'd swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to smile over the ache. No one had ever told him that you could cry happy tears and still be a man.)

* * *

_January, 1997_

Andy had taught him how to grind coffee beans and use his French press, and Greg was in the kitchen making coffee when the argument between Mark and Andy started.

Ben and his boyfriend Mark had come over to Andy's for dinner and even though Greg had mostly been struggling to stay afloat on a wave of reminiscences and references to people and things he didn't know, he hadn't missed Mark staring at him.

"How old is the twink?" Mark had interrupted some long-winded point that Ben was making about a local direct-action cycling activist group and civil liberties.

"I'm sorry?"

Greg's hands stilled on the French press.

"Greg. How old is he?" Mark's voice was cool and light.

"I'm not sure that's any of your business."

He could hear a subdued clinking as Andy gathered together plates and cutlery. Could almost picture his face, stiff with irritation.

"It takes a village, doesn't it?"

"A village?"

"To raise a child."

There was an awful silence; so awful that Greg nearly laughed to break its tension.

"Fuck you, Mark. I'm not some chickenhawk, and I resent the fucking implication that I am. I didn't pick Greg up in some park where he was playing with his Lincoln Logs in the sandbox. He was drinking espresso in a coffee bar where all the club kids go to buy their pills."

"Drinking espresso?" There was a sneer a mile wide in Mark's voice. "I can see why you would naturally have assumed he was 25 if he was drinking _coffee_."

"Fuck you." Andy's voice was tight with anger.

"Better me than him." Mark's tone was chilly. "You do realise that you'll lose your job if this comes out? That you could do actual time in a real prison for what you're doing?"

"He's not a child."

"What, because he has a veneer of San Francisco cool? If he lived anywhere else he'd be wearing a flannel shirt and a backpack."

Greg heard a chair being pushed back. "Do you have anything to add to this, Ben?"

Ben cleared his throat. "Leave me out of this."

"I'll take that as a 'no'." There a beat of silence. "I think it might be time for you both to go."

"He's a good kid." Mark still sounded pissed off, but his tone had softened. "And from what Ben says, so were you."

They hadn't seen Ben again until six months had passed and he'd left Mark for a man who worked for the same law-firm that he did.

**

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Now, Las Vegas

* * *

**

If Andy hadn't been the only lone guy in Rejavanate, Greg might not have recognised him.

Andy was wearing a sober pair of black trousers and an understated shirt. His hair was grey at the temples and his utterly conventional haircut might have been copied and pasted from any of the thousands of heads bobbing down Wall Street. Greg couldn't help but contrast his current outfit with the vintage t-shirt and achingly hip jeans that he had been wearing the last time they had seen each other.

("Hey," Andy had said, tilting Greg's chin up in a vain effort to get Greg to look him in the eye. "We always knew that this would end when it was time for you to go to Stanford."

As though they'd discussed it. As though they'd sat and talked about their relationship and where it was heading during those two and a bit years.

It had always been Andy reading from the map while Greg tried to navigate from the landmarks flashing too quickly past the window.)

Andy stood up when he spotted Greg, and Greg's stomach flipped over at the expression on his face.

"Andy, it's good to see you." A hug seemed too much with Andy standing there all serious, but a handshake seemed too little. He settled for an awkward wave. "Can I buy you a coffee?"

"Greg." Andy flicked his gaze over Greg. He smiled. "It's good to see you, too. Long time, huh?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm good for coffee."

Greg ordered an Americano at the counter; feeling Andy's eyes on his back. He felt a thrum in his stomach, as though the conversation had already taken an unexpected detour.

"So." He sat down, and put his mug on the table. "How have you been?"

Andy bit his lip. "I've had some stuff going on."

This was it, then.

"Stuff?" Greg could hear the shake in his voice.

Andy bobbed his head and opened his mouth as if to say something. There was a beat of silence and then he half-smiled to himself.

"You'd think this would be easy. I say this every day."

"What?" Greg frowned, shifting in his seat.

"I'm a drug addict, Greg. I'm in recovery."

The unexpectedness of it made Greg pause with his coffee mug halfway to his mouth. "What?"

Andy took a sip of his latte. Put his mug down. "I've been clean for nine months."

"Wow. Congratulations." The word echoed in Greg's head and he wondered if _Congratulations _was the wrong thing to say. Would _good job, man _have been better?

Andy wrapped his hands around his mug. "I guess you're wondering what this has to do with you?"

Greg shrugged. "I'm glad to see you. I'm glad you're more ok than you were nine months ago."

Andy smiled. "Thanks." The smile slipped away. "I'm working the twelve steps."

"Like NA? Narcotics Anonymous?"

"Exactly." Andy nodded. Another awkward silence, and Greg felt a sharp spasm of foreboding.

"So, step nine is making amends. You're supposed to go to the people you wronged while you were actively addicted."

"Ok." It was almost a question.

Andy took a deep breath. "Greg, our relationship was abusive. I committed a crime when I had sex with you, and there's not a day that goes past when I don't regret what I did to you."

No one had ever thrown a bucket of cold water over Greg's head, but afterwards he thought that it might feel a lot like that.

He sat looking at Andy, dimly aware that his mouth was hanging open.

"I'm not saying this because I want your forgiveness. I just need to acknowledge what happened and for you to let me know if there's anything I can do. If you want me to, I'll turn myself in to the police."

Greg's eyebrow twitched. "There's a three year statute of limitations on statutory rape in California. You're not going to jail."

Andy looked like someone had hit him. "You've looked into this? Reporting me? Did your therapist encourage you to?"

Greg shook his head. "No, I'm in law enforcement. I'm a crime scene investigator." He sighed. "Sorry, I'm just struggling to process this. I don't really know what you want me to say."

Andy shrugged. "You don't have to say anything. I just needed to acknowledge this wrong and to make amends if I could."

Greg gritted his teeth. "You were good to me, Andy. I don't have any bad memories of our time together." He found more words. "You were generous and patient. I'm not an expert in recovery from addiction, but I really don't think you should beat yourself up about this."

"Is it possible that you just haven't acknowledged how much pain I caused you?"

Greg raised an eyebrow. "It's possible. But isn't it more possible that I can identify my own feelings better than you can?"

Andy's expression was as patient as the Buddha's. Greg fought down the desire to reach across the table and slap him.

"You were a _child, _Greg."

Greg looked at him for a moment. "You didn't think so at the time. I remember the argument you had with Mark."

"Mark?" Andy looked confused.

"Ben Berman's boyfriend."

(When he heard the door of the apartment close behind Ben and Mark he'd come out of the kitchen with the coffee pot and two cups.

"I guess they're not staying for coffee, then. Which is a shame, because I had some colouring to show them that I'm really proud of. Hardly got any crayon outside the lines." His voice was dry.

Andy looked at him in surprise before starting to laugh.)

"I wasn't thinking straight, Greg. I was in the throes of an addiction."

"You were totally functional, Andy. You never missed a day of work. You went for all those lunches with your Mom. We hung out, like, all the time. Are you saying your brain was scrambled the whole time that was going on?"

Andy sighed. "I was in a car accident a few months before I met you."

Greg nodded. "I remember you talking about it."

"I had some back pain and my doctor prescribed me Vicodin. By the time I met you, I was buying them on the grey market and abusing them. And taking ecstasy and coke on the weekends."

Greg raised an eyebrow. "Was there anyone we knew who wasn't taking ecstasy and coke on the weekends? And plenty of people were taking opioids for the comedown."

Andy licked his lips. "I'm sorry that I don't have a more exciting drug addiction story for you, Greg. But the drugs I did take were a problem for me, because I did a lot of things I wasn't proud of."

"Like snatching me from my cradle? What else?" Greg's voice was hard.

There was a pause. Andy looked Greg in the eye. "There were other guys, Greg. I'm sorry."

"Other guys? How many?"

Andy shrugged. "I really don't know. I know it's a cliché, but they meant nothing."

Greg bit his lip. "It seems kinda like I meant nothing."

"I was a drug—"

"So you keep saying." Greg zipped his jacket up and stood up. "You know, until I came here today I had really nice memories of you and the time we spent together. I thought we had a blast. So maybe what you should be apologising for is not the stuff that you did when you were addicted, but the fact that you're part of some bullshit system that involves trampling on the memories of other people and telling them things that make them feel bad."

"It's the truth, Greg."

Greg snorted. "No, it's _your _truth. Which you've filtered through some platitudinous, self-serving sloganfest. Confession might be good for the soul, but right now you couldn't care less about the people you're confessing to. And that's just lame."

He walked out of Rejavanate without a second glance and made it all the way round the corner before the tears started to fall. He wondered if it made him the worst person in the world to wish that Andy really had been sick after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks:** To Podga for the fast, accurate and discerning beta read. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

* * *

**January, 1997

* * *

**

"How did the dinner go?" Amelia's voice cut across _Priscilla, Queen of the Desert_.

"Dinner?" Greg was still concentrating on the TV screen.

"_The_ dinner. With Andy's friend from college. Ben."

Greg tore his eyes away from the screen. "I forgot I told you about that."

Amelia shrugged. "It sounded kinda important. Finally having dinner with the best friend and his boyfriend. Like a grown up dinner party."

For a second, Greg considered telling her. About Andy, and how quiet he'd been after Ben and Mark left. How that night Andy had just rolled over and gone to sleep after Greg had sucked him off, not even kissing him goodnight. How, the following morning, Greg had watched Andy look at the backpack in which Greg carried his school books as if it caused him real pain.

But there was something stopping him and he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. Amelia had never said anything _bad _about Andy, but there were questions in her eyes, sometimes, that he didn't want to answer.

It hadn't helped that the first time Andy and Amelia had met, he'd watched her push food around on her plate with barely concealed concern, and then asked Greg what was wrong with her, as soon as she'd excused herself to go to the bathroom.

"What do you mean?" Greg had asked.

"She looks like she weighs about as much as a magazine." Andy had replied. "Does she have anorexia or something?"

Greg hadn't thought to edit Andy's comments before he related them to Amelia and he'd caught the expression of fearful anger on her face before she smoothed it away. Although she had explained to Greg that everyone in her family was just_ skinny, dammit_, there was an arch quality to her voice when she talked about Andy after that, that Greg didn't much care for.

* * *

**Now, Las Vegas

* * *

**

Nick was on his feet as soon as he heard Greg's key in the lock, and he was standing in the hall by the time their front door swung open.

Greg's face was ash white and stained with tears and, before he'd thought anything more than O_h, Greg, _Nick had closed the space between them and thrown his arms round him. He'd seen Greg cry when he was happy, or when there was something sad on TV or in a film, but he'd never seen Greg cry because he was hurt, and seeing it now stung like a slap.

Nick slid his hands under the waistband of Greg's jeans, rubbing comforting circles on the warm skin in the hollow of Greg's back, but Greg twitched under his fingers and pulled away.

"He's not sick."

Nick felt a brief pinprick of relief before that sensation was swept away by a growing sense of alarm.

"If he's not sick, then what's wrong?"

Greg shook his head. "Can we sit down?"

They sat on the sofa that they'd brought from Nick's old place, and Nick wondered, briefly, if he had gone ahead and thrown it away would he still be having awful conversations with people he loved on such a regular basis?

"What's wrong? Nick asked again.

Greg sat on the edge of the sofa and he looked smaller, somehow.

"I don't want you to freak out."

Nick's lip quirked. "You're kinda freaking me out right now, Greggo."

"Yeah." Greg smiled and it was as thin and insubstantial as tissue. "I'm just thinking of the best way to say this."

Nick dropped his hand onto Greg's knee and squeezed it through the denim. "There's nothing you can't say to me, man."

Greg blew out a breath. "Andy wanted to talk to me because he's in recovery. He's doing the twelve steps."

Nick frowned. "AA?"

Greg shook his head. "NA. For drug addicts."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "He's a drug addict."

"He feels like he is." Greg hesitated. "I don't know."

"You think he's lying?"

Greg shook his head again. "Not lying, exactly. I guess he feels like the amount of drugs he was taking was a problem. It sounded like he carried on taking the same stuff we took when we were together."

"He gave you drugs?" Nick asked, steel in his voice.

Greg looked surprised. "Yeah. I thought you knew that."

Nick leaned forward and laced his fingers through Greg's, and Greg's hand was warm in his.

"This isn't supposed to sound like I'm accusing you of something, but you leave out a lot of details when you talk about him." He shook his head. "I guess I was really naïve and thought that you'd done drugs with your friends in high school, but maybe not with Andy. Not after you mentioned how much younger you were."

Greg huffed out a breath. "Yeah, that's kind of what Andy wanted to talk to me about."

"The drugs? Was he worried you were an addict, too?"

Greg shook his head. "No, he wanted to make amends for statutory rape. He said our relationship was abusive."

Nick couldn't stop the shudder rolling up his spine. "_Jesus._"

"Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too."

Nick tried to gather himself; tried not to think about Greg small and hurting and scared. _This isn't that. _"How do you feel about what he said?"

Greg looked for the right words. "I guess that I thought we had a nice time together. At the time I thought we were a lot closer than we were; I didn't have much to compare it with. He wasn't bad to me, though."

Nick squeezed his fingers, feeling the strength of Greg's hand under his own.

"But now I feel like he's recasting the whole thing to make it dirty and awful and I don't really understand why."

Nick was still. "You're only a year or so older than he was when you guys met."

"Yeah?"

"Can you imagine going out with a fifteen year old?"

Nick watched a spasm of disgust flicker across Greg's face. "Fuck, no."

"Why not?"

Greg looked down at their linked hands and the silence unfurled until it filled the room, pressing into the space between Nick and Greg.

"I can't." Greg said, carefully. "I know where you're going with this and I just can't."

Nick dusted the fingertips of his hand over Greg's thigh.

"I'm not trying to back you into a corner, baby. We can talk about whatever you want."

"My parents thought it was ok." There was a note of desperation in Greg's voice. "They thought I was different from your average teen."

"Did they meet Andy?"

"Yeah." Greg ducked his head. "He came for dinner a couple of times."

* * *

**May, 1997

* * *

**

Greg had never seen his father thrown so off balance as he was when he caught Greg making out with Andy at the corner of their street. Andy was dropping him off, after they'd been to see Suede at some secret, acoustic gig for which one of Andy's friends had got them on the guest list, and which hadn't, in Greg's opinion, really rocked hard enough to be worth the excitement. Andy's tongue was in his mouth, and his fingers were tweaking one of Greg's nipples through his shirt, when Greg's father had knocked on the car window with his knuckles.

"Shit, that's my dad."

Greg scrambled out of the car and looked at his father through his eyelashes, trying to gauge his father's response to what he had just seen. Andy climbed out more deliberately and, looking Greg's father in the eye, held out his hand.

"Andy Williams. Pleased to meet you, Dr Sanders."

Greg's father shook Andy's hand, and made an indeterminate noise, before ushering his son back up the hill to their house.

"What's wrong?" His mother was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop when Greg and his father trooped into the kitchen, Greg praying that his father would say something, _anything _to break the awkward silence.

"I just came across our son and his much, _much _older boyfriend necking in a car at the corner." His father poured himself a glass of wine from the open bottle that was sitting on the kitchen table. "Did you know this was going on?"

"Um, Dad? I'm right here."

His father ignored him. "Did you?"

His mother sipped from her own glass of wine. "Andy? Yes, Greg's been seeing him for about six months."

His father blinked. "Have you seen him? He looks about thirty."

"He's 28, Dad."

"Oh, I do beg your pardon sorry, Gregory. So he's only _twelve _years older than you rather than fourteen?"

Greg was stunned into silence by his father's unexpected sarcasm.

"So you knew about this?"

His mother raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Don't be such a prudish American, Matt. In most countries of the world it's perfectly legal for people Greg's age to have sex with anyone they want."

"Jesus, Mom."

"Go to your room, Greg." His father's voice was like ice.

"But this is about me. I want to stay and hear this." Greg was starting to get angry. Frustrated and angry.

"_I _am your _father, _and I've told you to go to your _room_." In sixteen years Greg couldn't remember hearing his father take that tone with him.

Discretion seemed the better part of valour, and Greg retreated to the bottom of the stairs, where he could still hear his parents' voices from the kitchen.

"I can't believe you." His father still sounded furious, but he had lowered his voice.

"What can you not believe?" There was the faintest tint of sarcasm to his mother's tone.

"I read your book, Asti. Your brilliant, cogently argued book about the sexual exploitation of children and strengthening children's rights. The weakness of Article 34 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The case for an optional protocol."

"You're saying Greg is _selling _himself to this man?"

His father made a frustrated noise. "Don't be deliberately obtuse. I'm saying that this man, this _Andy, _is too old for Greg. He's a child."

"We've raised him to be independent, Matt. He likes the theatre, and the New York Times. He reads books about poverty and politics. He's not like other sixteen-year olds. Thank God. Imagine if he were a mouse like Amelia?"

Greg could hear his father's sigh from his place on the stairs. "All of that is superficial, Asti. Reading Shakespeare doesn't prepare you for getting your heart broken. Or stop you from getting AIDS."

His mother made a satisfied noise. "So this is about his sexuality? You are uncomfortable with it?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'd be uncomfortable if a 28-year old woman was necking with my son in her car. I just happen to have read an article about HIV/AIDS epidemiology in the doctor's office the other week, and now I can't get the figures out of my head."

There was a long silence from the kitchen, and then his mother sounded gentle, rather than coolly amused. "We'll invite him to dinner, Matty. You'll see that it will all be ok."

(But it wasn't ok. Not really.

His father had put on a tie and his mother had made pasta and something involving meringue, and coffee that wasn't as nice as Andy's. Greg's mother and Andy had talked about art and music, and theatre, while Greg's father had scowled at him from his place at the bottom of the table.

_Fathers, _said Andy, afterwards. But even Greg knew that was unfair.)

* * *

**Now, Las Vegas

* * *

**

"Thanks for agreeing to see me." Nick paused. "This feels disloyal, but I don't know who else to talk to about this."

James Wilkes caught his lower lip between his teeth. "Sure. My door is always open to you, Nick."

"Greg said that he'd talked to you about his meeting with his ex. Andy."

It wasn't a question, but James answered it anyway. "Yeah, he called me yesterday. He'd mentioned it to me when you guys thought he might be getting in contact with Greg to say he was positive."

Nick hesitated. "Did you know that when they got together Greg was fifteen and Andy was 27?"

James's eyebrow flickered.

"Yeah," said Nick, watching James's face intently. "My thoughts exactly. I guess I just wanted to ask you, because you do this job and I thought you might know, exactly how fucked up _is_ that?"

James leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the edge of his desk.

"That's a hard question to answer."

"I'll take anything you've got."

"Well, it's statutory rape. In the state of California the collective consensus is that fifteen-year-olds can't consent to sex."

Nick tried to control his flinch at the word _rape. _"Yeah."

"On the other hand, a lot of teens have sexual experiences below the age of consent. Rioting hormones, and all of that."

Nick nodded. Tried not to think about Jessica McKendrick. "Mmm hmm."

"Gay men who are Greg's age weren't necessarily out when they were 15, and, whether they were or not, didn't necessarily have a whole bunch of gay young men their own age to experiment with."

Nick nodded again. Tried not to think about David McKendrick, who, he would swear on a stack of Bibles, _had_ checked him out when he arrived to pick up Jessica for the prom.

"The scene is what it is, and a lot of young gay men find themselves in places and situations that are really aimed at an older crowd. I know Greg spent a lot of time in clubs that were basically meat markets."

Nick cleared his throat. "I kind of get all that. I guess I'm just not real clear on what Andy got out of all of this."

"Same thing a straight guy in his twenties gets from a teenage girl. Control. The thrill of popping a cherry. Playing Henry Higgins to Eliza Doolittle." James's tone was biting.

"So you think it's abusive?"

James took a breath and let it out. "_I _do, yes. But – and it's a pretty big but – I think that there can sometimes be limited value in insisting on that to the person who was in that relationship."

Nick frowned. "I'm not sure I follow."

James looked him in the eye. "As a gross generalisation, the young person in that kind of relationships feels respected, and flattered by an older guy being interested in them. They often get to do the kind of sophisticated things that teens generally don't get to do, and that can isolate them from their peer group. The school environment denies autonomy to young people; so much so that being asked for their opinion and being listened to – however perfunctorily by adult standards – feels like love to them."

"That makes sense."

"To get a young person from the position of feeling loved and respected to feeling like their trust is being abused is incredibly difficult, for obvious reasons."

"No one _wants _to feel like a victim."

"Exactly." James tapped his fingers on his desk. "That kind of awareness raising is something we try to do with the young people here, if they're in a relationship with someone older. It can be fucking heartbreaking though. If it's is all in the past, then our counsellors tend to leave it there, unless the relationship was abusive or unhealthy in a way that's creating problems for the person in the present."

Nick chewed his lip. "I want to do whatever causes Greg least pain."

"Then I would take your lead from Greg."

Nick nodded. "I've been trying to do that, but he's asking me some pretty direct questions about what I think about all of this."

"And what do you think?" Nick dropped his head. "If it's okay to ask."

Nick sighed. "My gut reaction is that Andy deserves to be sat on his ass in a cell, but I have some personal history that makes me think I might be overreacting."

"You were in a similar kind of relationship?"

"No. "

"I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"It's fine. I was abused until I was thirteen. By a man and a woman. I guess I have a tendency to see that kind of thing everywhere." Nick's voice was steady.

James was very still. "It _is _everywhere. You don't get to do my kind of job – or yours either – without knowing that." He paused. "I'm sorry that happened to you. I really am, man."

It's ironic." Nick's voice caught, slightly. "Greg got an apology and it's made him miserable. Whereas, I'm—"

"Probably never going to get one?" The look of understanding on James Wilkes' face made his throat tighten.

"Yeah."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

**

* * *

**

**A/N:** With thanks to Podga from LJ for the exceptionally quick and gracious beta read.

* * *

After ten years of being a CSI, Nick's certainty that any sight or smell could shake him was tempered only by his belief that there was literally no act of violence too disturbing or disgusting for human beings to do to one another. Standing in the kitchen of the Dew Drop Diner, he couldn't remember how long it had been since his stomach had churned at a scene.

As far as Nick was concerned, David couldn't finish too quickly with his initial evaluation of the body. The head had ballooned grotesquely, and Nick added _face first in a deep fat fryer _to the list of ways that he didn't want to die.

Even without the teenaged corpse, the skin of which crackled monstrously as David eased the zipper of the body bag closed over its face, the crime scene was grim. The co-worker, who had pulled Mary-Jo Dugger out of the fryer, had burns up both arms, and she was standing in a pool of stale grease where the body had flipped out of the fryer onto the ground. The smell of cooking oil lingered in the air and coated the skin of everyone in the room.

* * *

The house was in darkness when Nick arrived home. Dumping his bag in the hall, he made for the kitchen. He could still taste grease from the Dew Drop Diner, and he knew from years of experience that the fizz of soda lifted most rank tastes off the human tongue.

He flicked the light on at the same time as Greg spoke, and the voice coming out of the darkness made him jump.

"Sorry." Greg's voice was flat. "For surprising you."

He was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass and a vodka bottle in front of him. Nick took in the scene.

"Why are you sitting in the dark, Greggo?"

Greg shrugged.

Nick shifted uneasily on his feet, feeling the ache of his back from his night in the diner. "Is something wrong?"

"Why do you ask, _Nick_?" Something about how Greg said his name made Nick uncomfortable.

"C'mon, man. You're sitting in the dark, drinking vodka straight up. You're the very embodiment of 'something is wrong'."

Greg took a sip of his drink. Winced. "First, why don't we have any decent tasting liquor in the house?"

"Because you and Archie finished off the last of the Glenmorangie." Nick was impatient. "And second?"

Greg twisted round in his chair, so that he was looking Nick full in the face.

"You spoke to Wilkie about me and Andy?"

Nick blinked. "He told you about that?"

"No, man. He'll keep any fucking secret you tell him. What he did do was email you some stuff on statutory rape and the impact on the _victim._"

"You read my email?" Nick tried, and failed, to keep the accusation out of his tone.

"You left your laptop docked. I just wanted to print something off real quick." Greg shook his head. "Not the fucking point, man. I trust you with my life and you run right out and discuss it all in painful detail with my friend? _My _friend?"

Nick took a deep breath. "I think we should wait until we're both sober to talk about this."

Greg's eyes opened wide. "Oh please, Nick. Why don't you patronise me some more? I guess I'm too fucking broken to have two fingers of vodka and be capable of conversing with the grown ups."

"No one said you were broken."

"I'm the victim of a crime, Nicky. You and Wilkie spent a fun-filled afternoon talking about it, remember?"

"I wanted to make sure I understood what happened." Nick hesitated. "I wanted some sense of what's normal."

Greg spluttered into his drink. "So now I'm a case study in an abnormal psychology textbook?"

Nick felt his face darken. "Are you deliberately trying to misconstrue every damn thing I say? I didn't have any relationships with boys or men in my teenage years, remember? I don't have anything to compare your experience to."

"And was Wilkie enlightening?" Greg's eyes were accusatory.

"Yeah. He was helpful."

"So, what did he say?"

Nick filled a glass with water, drops from the faucet spattering loudly against the sink, and sat down. "That the scene, and lack of out teenagers, means that a lot of young guys have similar experiences to you."

Nick hesitated.

"And?"

"And that when they're working with the young person, they try to encourage him to see it as something he needs to step away from, but that if it's in the past they leave it there."

"And was all this fun for you?" Greg's tone was like ice.

"Fun?" Nick watched Greg pour another drink, sloshing some onto the smooth surface of the table.

He jumped up and tore a couple of pieces of kitchen paper off the roll.

"Here," he held it out to Greg, paper rough under his fingers.

Greg looked at it balefully. "So now you're literally clearing up my messes?"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "You've done the dishes, Greg. You've _literally _cleaned up my mess while I've been at work. So maybe you could stop reading some bad, controlling intent into everything I do."

He realised that he was nearly yelling, and lowered his voice.

"No, it wasn't _fun. _I hate that Andy might have hurt you, then or now. But I didn't want to assume that it was one thing when it wasn't that thing. I needed some perspective."

Greg was silent.

"And I couldn't think where else to get it." Nick slid his fingers across the cool wood of the kitchen table towards Greg's. Greg moved his hands further away.

"I'm sorry if I upset you by going behind your back."

For a second, Nick thought that Greg was going to twine his fingers through Nick's and that Greg's anger would segue smoothly into a particularly Greggish kind of grumpiness, which could generally be lifted with ice cream and some good sex.

Instead, Greg reached into the pocket of his jacket, which was hanging over the back of his chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

Nick felt a burst of irritation.

"Is this a throwback to way back when? Getting in an adolescent snit?" Nick shook his head. "I'm feeling sympathy for your Mom right now."

Greg separated the plastic wrapping from the cardboard and flipped the top, yanking out the silver paper covering the neat rows of cigarettes. He put one in his mouth. Flicked the lighter.

"Save your sympathy. It's not like my Mom was around to _see_ me being in an adolescent snit. We didn't all get to grow up on Walton's Mountain."

Nick stood up and grabbed an ashtray from on top of the cabinet. They'd never even used these, but Greg had picked up three the last time he'd dragged Nick to Crate & Barrel. _In case of guests_, he had said, and even though Nick couldn't think of anyone they knew that smoked, he liked the idea of the two of them hosting an after-party. Or the kind of bohemian dinner party that Greg reminisced about.

"At least use a fucking ashtray." And he wished he could take the words back, because he never swore at Greg. Never. And he could hear his voice sliding all over the place, like he was skidding on ice.

"You're acting like a child, Greg."

"I often do, Nick." Greg's breathed out a thin stream of smoke. "You should know. You've had the benefit of the things I learned on my knees when I was a teen."

"Fuck you." Nick could feel rage humming through his body, a blast of anger that seemed to start somewhere at the top of his spine and rush along all of his limbs until it pounded at his fingers and toes. "Fuck _you._"

Greg took a drag on his cigarette, the paper crackling as it burned.

"Oh really?" His voice was dangerous. "Fuck _me_?"

Nick was shaking. "Yeah."

"Am I the one who fucking betrayed you? Who went behind your back to your closest fucking friend?"

Greg's anger somehow diminished Nick's, as if there was only able to be a certain amount of it in the room and they had to share it between them..

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Greg, I don't—" Every possible route that this conversation could go seemed suddenly to be laden with traps.

"You don't what?"

"I don't think that it was like you're imagining it. I told James that your ages were so different, and asked him what that meant. I was real careful not to talk about anything more."

"He's my best fucking friend, Nick."

Nick looked at Greg. Took in the hunch of his shoulders, and his fingers tapping relentlessly on the table like he was trying to crush his jitters into the gleaming wood.

"I'm not sure what you're saying, Greg. Could you maybe tell me what you mean?"

Greg mashed his cigarette out in the ashtray.

"I mean that it's not your fucking place to go to my friends and tell them stuff about me. How is that unclear?"

Greg was frowning.

"Greg, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that you feel like I went behind your back."

Greg's smile was ugly. "Oh, you're sorry I _feel _like you went behind my back?"

"I don't know what we're talking about, Greg."

"I'll spell it the fuck out for you, _Nick._" Greg's tone was sneering. "As you're too fucking stupid to have grasped it the eight previous times. James is _my_ friend and I would appreciate it if you didn't discuss my private fucking business with him."

Nick stood up. "I'm really not going to sit around here while you call me stupid." Nick could hear the kitchen clock ticking. "I'm going to bed and we'll discuss this tomorrow."

"Why don't you call James and tell him how unreasonable I'm being? I'm sure he'll be sympathetic."

"Whatever, Greg. Good night."

Greg pushed himself out of his chair, palms on the table.

"You don't just get to leave." His voice was unsteady. "You don't just get to fucking leave me."

Nick turned in the doorway. "I'm just going to bed, Greg."

"No! I want to finish this discussion."

Nick paused. "Well, I don't. We're just going round in circles and I think it would be better if we talked about it in the morning."

"No!" Greg had crossed the room in three strides and was standing so close that Nick could smell the cigarettes and vodka on his breath.

"Good night, Greg."

"I said 'no'."

And time seemed to slow then, so that it seemed like a minute, rather than just seconds, before Greg's hands were clutched round his upper arms, shaking him.

"_Listen _to me. You have to fucking _listen to me._"

It felt like someone else's hand when Nick put his squarely in the middle of Greg's chest and pushed as hard as he could. Greg stumbled backwards, away from him.

It felt like someone else's legs when Nick turned and walked away. He heard Greg's broken sobs before he reached their bedroom door, which, in an instinct he felt ashamed of later, he locked behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

With thanks to Podga for a fast, accurate and charming beta.

With apologies to everyone who has been waiting a ridiculous length of time for an update.

* * *

**Chapter Five**

The silence that came after the lock on their bedroom door scraped shut rang in Greg's ears. He had forgotten how the absence of noise that hung between two people who weren't talking could pulse and tremble like a bassline.

Greg sat at the table for a while, staring at the flecks of ash floating in his vodka, until he couldn't stand the freefall in his stomach for another second. He grabbed his keys and headed out.

* * *

"Come in." James held the door open so that Greg could walk past him.

"I've _really _fucked things up this time."

James tilted his head to one side. "This isn't you coming to drown your sorrows in cock, is it? Because we are _so_ not going there."

Greg shook his head mutely.

James's gaze on his face sharpened. "What's up?"

Greg took a breath, fighting against the sensation of his chest tightening. "I don't know."

James frowned. "Why don't I make you some coffee and you can tell me what happened?"

James's apartment was open plan, and the table that stretched along one length of the main living space was its epicenter. The place that the GLBT centre had been planned at. The glossy white surface that Greg had eaten countless dinners on, and wiped wine and cigarette ash from, and fucked on. The closest thing that Greg had to a confessional.

"I don't know." He sat down, and leaned his elbows on the table. "I was printing something off from Nick's laptop and I clicked the wrong button and ended up in his email. When I saw that you'd sent him some stuff, I realised that he must have talked to you."

James pulled a bag of coffee beans from the fridge and tipped some into the grinder. "Did you discuss it with Nick?"

"Yeah. He's trying to figure out all this Andy stuff. He wanted a second opinion."

James made a noise that could have been agreement, and Greg felt a brief wave of irritation that Nick's discussion with him was apparently under some kind of therapists' seal of confidentiality.

Greg dipped his head. "I felt like he'd betrayed me."

"He's not allowed to discuss your relationship with anyone else?"

"It made me sick to my stomach, Wilkie." Greg clenched his fists against his jeans.

James tipped coffee from the grinder into a French press and poured boiling water on top of it. "Why?"

Greg shivered involuntarily, anger already spent. "I don't know."

"I think you do."

Greg's eyes filled with tears. "I don't know what you want me to say."

James's tone was calm. "That's okay." He looked at Greg. "I want you to know that you are safe. That you can tell me anything you need to and it stays within these four walls."

Greg rubbed his fingers savagely over his eyes. "Is this the line that you give your clients, Wilkie?"

James's face was impassive. "It's not a line."

Greg hunched his shoulders. "Yeah."

James watched the muscle in Greg's jaw twitch. He hesitated. "What happened tonight?"

Greg let out a breath. "We had a fight."

"A fight?"

Greg pulled one foot onto the edge of his chair and rested his chin on his knee. "Not really a fight. I yelled at Nick. I accused him of betraying me. I said he was stupid." He paused, with his mouth open, tongue almost refusing to shape the words. "I put my hands on him."

"You hit him?" James's tone was flat.

Greg shook his head. "I shook him. I held him by the arms and shook him and shouted in his face. He had to push me off of him."

"What made you do that?"

Greg's head snapped back. "What made me _do _that? Nothing _made _me do it. He didn't deserve it."

James pushed the plunger of the French press down. Greg watched the coffee grounds swirl up towards the metal.

"I'm not saying that it's Nick's fault." James's tone was mild. "I'm asking what was going through your mind."

"That he wouldn't listen to me." Greg said, immediately. "That he had to stop and _listen _to me."

"Does Nick usually listen to you?"

"Of course he does." Greg's tone was scornful. "He's the nicest guy in the whole world."

"So what makes you think he wasn't listening to you tonight?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do."

Greg leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. James poured coffee into their mugs.

"Why do you like me?" Greg asked. "Why are we friends?"

"Because you're a good guy. And you're smart and funny. And you're the only other thirty-something man I know who knows all the words to the Buffy musical episode." James took a sip of his coffee. "And because you were there through some truly shit-awful times in my life."

Greg was staring at the table. "Sometimes I think that you were just around for the sex."

James started to speak, but Greg cut him off.

"It's not," he said, carefully, "that I think that's what's really going on. It's just that sometimes I get this idea that you were just around for the fucking and Nick's just around because he doesn't know any better, and a part of me knows that's bullshit, but it still feels real."

Greg ran his finger along the edge of the table. "I just had this picture in my head of the two of you talking about what a pathetic loser I am."

James put his hand on Greg's shoulder. "You're one of the best people I know, dude. Why is it so easy for you to think that people aren't being sincere in loving you?"

"I don't know how to be someone's friend. This shit with Andy has just reminded me of that."

"What do you mean?" James's face was screwed up in confusion. "You're my best friend. The person I can count on above any other."

"The person who phoned you up to tell you that his ex might be positive without even thinking about how you might feel? Seriously, Wilkie, I'm the best you got?"

James looked into his mug.

"I never had close buddies until Amelia in high school." Greg snorted. "I don't want you to think I'm a total loser. I mean, there were always kids at my birthday party, but I didn't fit in. My Mom had me in this gifted program and I studied all the time, but I didn't even really fit in with the science nerds."

"A lot of kids take a while to find their niche. We see it at the centre all the time."

"It's not just that. I was a pretty shitty friend when I did find someone to be close with."

* * *

**June, 1998**

* * *

"You moved the bed." Greg looked around him. "And that notice board is new."

Amelia lifted one shoulder. "It's been there for a year."

"Oh."

She smiled, suddenly. "It's okay, Greg. All those college visits. Hanging with Andy. Homework. I know you've been busy."

He stood, awkwardly, hands hanging by his sides. "Yeah, well, things are over with Andy."

She stood, quietly, next to her desk, and he knew that if she were even the least bit sorry then she would be talking to him, instead of letting the silence draw out between them.

Greg pulled a piece of paper out of his messenger bag. "And we're getting the heck out of Dodge. Is it freakish that I'm beyond excited by college reading lists? So much more sophisticated than high school books."

Amelia smiled a small smile. "No, I'm looking forward to an epic trip to the college bookstore."

She ran the toe of her Chuck T up the back of her jeans. "Do you think it will be weird for our parents without us?"

Greg shrugged. "I guess. A little. But they've had to have been preparing for this. Right?"

Amelia pulled her sleeves down over her hands.

Greg looked at her. "And your parents still have your sister. It's not like they'll be all alone."

"Yeah." Her expression flickered and she held out her hand... "Pass me that housing brochure that's lying on the bed?"

* * *

**Present Day**

**

* * *

**

"Amelia never told me what was going on with her family, and I never pushed it."

James frowned. "And how does that make you a shitty friend? How long did it take me to tell you about my collection of freakish relatives?"

Greg took a deep breath. "I saw her during Christmas break our freshman year of college. She looked like she weighed about as much as a Franklin Mint teapot. Andy was always convinced she had some kind of eating disorder, but she said everything was fine and the dining hall food was disgusting, and she was so busy with studying she kept forgetting to eat. And Yale, you know? It's hard work."

James put his hand on Greg's arm.

"She killed herself two weeks after she went back east."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"Greg, I'm so sorry." James tightened his grip on Greg.

"Thanks."

"Hey, don't brush that off, man." James took a sip of his coffee. "You know that wasn't your fault, right?"

Greg sighed. "Yes, and no. I get that she was responsible for what she did, but no man is an island. I was so wrapped up in this completely unhealthy relationship that I let things slide. And now the thing that I gave time to instead of my friends is back in my face telling me I was some abused little boy."

"And how are you doing with that?"

Greg took a deep breath. "I want to talk about it with Nick, but it's complicated."

"Because he was abused?" James's voice was mild.

"He talked to you about that?" Greg couldn't keep the sharpness out of his voice.

James shook his head. "He mentioned it because he was worried he was over-reacting to what happened between you and Andy."

Greg swallowed. "Last night, when I was getting drunk and stupid, I tried to tell myself that I was worried about bringing stuff up for him."

"But that's not it?"

Greg shook his head, miserably.

"I think you should go and talk to him."

Greg looked at the clock on the wall. "He'll be asleep now. I'll talk to him after shift."

***

"Everything okay, Nicky?"

Nick looked up from the coffee pot in the breakroom. Catherine was standing in front of the open fridge door, a can of Fresca in her hand.

"Yeah." He smiled at her. "I just spaced out there for a moment."

"Long shift?" She closed the door.

"Dumpster diving for body parts."

"Nice." She smiled sympathetically. "Listen," she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Can I talk to you about something?"

"Sure." Nick leaned against the counter.

She sat down in one of the comfortless breakroom chairs and crossed one long leg over the other.

"So, Lindsay's finding the GLBT Centre really supportive, but she said something the other day that's got me thinking."

"Oh?"

Catherine looked at Nick and he saw the concern on her face written in the lines around her mouth.

"She's been talking about this girl Caitlyn who goes to the Centre, for months, and how Caitlyn totally got her and how similar they were. I was really happy that she'd found a friend there, who might get what she was going through. But the other night we were having dinner and she said that she and Caitlyn are going on a date, and I'm now a little concerned about their safety."

Nick blinked. "You mean if they're out mixing with the general public?"

Catherine's mouth sketched an embarrassed smile. "Does that sound ridiculous?"

"No, not at all. Catherine. Would it help to just ask her about safety, and what resources the Centre has for young women?"

Catherine swirled the Fresca around in its can. "Yeah. It's just, how do you even approach that without making her afraid?"

Nick considered. "She knows what you do for a living. Of all the things out there in the world, I doubt it's going to be talking about it with you that makes her scared."

Catherine shook her head. "I was looking at a couple of GLBT websites, and one had a story about lesbian women in South Africa getting raped by men trying to make them, quote, normal."

Nick sat down next to Catherine and put his arm around her shoulders. "Jesus, Catherine."

"It totally freaked me out."

"I can see why." He made a face. "No one can say that Lindsey is never going to have a moment's unhappiness in her life, but she has a great Mom and a good head on her shoulders, and that has to count for something. And, if all else fails, you can ground her until she's 21."

Catherine laughed weakly and leaned her head against his shoulder for a second. "When did you get so smart, Nicky?"

"I wish I was smart about my own life." Nick's tone was more bitter than he'd meant it to be.

"Problems?" Catherine looked at his face, and she was so close that he could see the lipstick feathering around the edges of her lipline.

"A little bit." He shook his head. "Nothing I can't handle."

Catherine ran her fingers under each eye with the practiced ease of a woman trying not to smudge her mascara, and Nick hoped that he was telling the truth.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Author's note: This chapter is a bit not!ficcy in place, but I don't know what else to do with this, and feel that if anyone wants one, they should have the best conclusion to this story that I can provide. I wrote this a long time ago, and probably wouldn't write it now, but *hands*.

* * *

Greg had planned to meet Nick after work. To be leaning against Nick's truck when Nick got off shift, with plans for going somewhere to talk, but also plans to just hang out because it had suddenly felt like an age since they'd been together.

His phone had rung just before the start of dayshift, and it had been Grissom, telling him that two students at Antony E. Zuiker High School had skipped early homeroom in favour of shooting the place up.

The scene was in controlled chaos when Greg arrived. The rotors of LVPD and TV helicopters beat the air overheard, and he could hear the constant buzz of radio comms. Police cars and buses were parked in orderly rows, flashers on. He could see the LVFD and Desert Palms paramedics triaging students and teachers. The media was being held at bay behind crime scene tape, but that hadn't stopped them trying to interview the clumps of students who were standing outside the perimeter, holding each other up and looking back towards the school buildings. He counted at least 20 of the 30-strong LVPD SWAT team standing near the building, and noticed that there were four snipers on the roof of the school.

Warrick, Nick and Sara were standing just inside the tape, and he joined them, after flashing his badge to the officer holding the line.

"Griss is just getting clearance from the OIC for us to go in." Warrick bumped his fist against Greg's upper arm.

Greg set his kit down. "Who _is _the officer in charge? This is my first one of these."

"Someone from SWAT." There was no strain in Nick's voice, although his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. "They took down one of the two shooters, and then the other one threw his weapons down. They were thinking there might be pipe bombs, but I think they've secured the scene now."

"They took one of the shooters into custody?"

Sara nodded. "A sixteen year old boy."

"How many DBs?"

"SWAT think forty." Grissom appeared behind Greg. "They've confirmed that they've secured the scene, so they're ready for you guys to go in. I'm going back to the lab to process the shooter. Nick, you're the lead CSI on scene, and I've given your details to Zebra 1, and DHS."

Nick nodded.

* * *

(Some kind of massive linking scene, in which Nick is overwhelmed by the crime scene, but it also puts things in perspective for him. He sees families shattered, and realises that his family is Greg, and that he's Greg's family.)

* * *

Greg was leaning against the front of the building when Nick finally got off shift and emerged from the air-conditioned cocoon of the Crime Lab into the already stifling heat of the Nevada morning.

Greg wrapped his arms around him before Nick said anything, and it was strange to stand in front of their workplace like that. Greg's skin was warm from the sun and Nick could feel Greg's arms hot against his neck. Their breathing wasn't quite in synch and there was something slightly uncomfortable about the way their ribcages brushed against each other through their skin and clothes.

"Can we talk?"

Nick nodded, his nose rubbing against Greg's cheek. "Of course."

Greg drove them to one of their favourite desert trails. "I want some privacy," he'd said, and Nick had nodded again, trying to ignore a tickle of fear that he couldn't quite explain.

They sat on the tailgate of Nick's truck while they put on their walking boots. As Nick struggled to unsnarl his laces, Greg looked at him.

"I love you so much, and I'm so sorry that I behaved like a total asshole."

Nck's head snapped up. "I love you too, Greg. And I think that I did something wrong, too, but I'm kind of confused."

Greg shook his head. "Wilkie helped me figure out what's going on with me, but before I start talking about that, I want you to know that I know what I did, and I'm never putting my hands on you again except in love."

Nick's stomach rolled. "It's okay, Greg."

"The fuck it is." Greg's expression was stony. "You had to push me off you, and the reason that makes me feel like an abusive asshole is because I _was_ an abusive asshole. I know that this is the cliché, but believe me when I say that is never happening again."

Nick swallowed. "I do believe you." He took Greg's hand in his. "I know your heart, Greg."

He ran a finger over the back of Greg's hand. "I've never felt safer than when I'm with you."

Greg choked back a sob.

"Talk to me, man." Nick urged. "What's going on with you?"

"God, Nicky!" Greg looked at Nick and his eyes were dark with misery. "I don't even know where to start."

Greg stood up and pulled Nick by the hand in the direction of the start of the trail, feet crunching over stone and dust.

They walked half a mile before Greg spoke.

"For a long time – years, really – I remember Andy's and my relationship as being great."

Nick nodded.

"There was a lot of stuff that was good about it, but you hit the nail on the head when you said that a lot of young people are really impressed by getting to do stuff that's a lot older than them."

They walked up a steep slope, and Nick could hear Greg suck a breath in, and then exhale, shakily.

"Speaking to Andy a couple days ago brought up so much stuff." He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. "He basically wrote off our entire relationship as an act of abuse that he perpetrated when he was too high to know any better; like I was a VCR he stole to support his habit."

Greg's voice was sharp with pain and Nick took Greg's hand in his, palm slick with sweat.

"Finding out about all of those other guys wasn't great, because I'd really misread our relationship at the time as being more important to him than it was."

Greg slowed his pace until they were standing still in the middle of the trail. He looked away from Nick.

"I've never talked about this to anyone, Nick. It's the most embarrassing, painful thing that ever happened to me, and I'd kind of pushed it away until this week."

Nick ran his thumb over the back of Greg's hand. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Greg."

Greg turned to face him, eyes dark. "I want to. But it's hard."

"I get that."

A flash of understanding crossed Greg's face. "Yeah." He blew out a breath. "I guess that while I was with Andy I tried to pretend that I was a lot more experienced than I was. Socially. Intellectually. Sexually. It was so _hard _to talk with him about that kind of stuff, and he got angry when people mentioned the age difference. I felt this pressure to keep him interested by not being needy."

Nick pressed his lips together, and he could feel the tension along his spine.

"Amelia once said to me that she didn't like the way he talked about me, but I knew they didn't like each other and I assumed that she meant he sounded proprietal or something."

Nick nodded.

"And then one day I walked in on him talking with my mother, in our kitchen, about how my father and I had problems with intimacy. And they were on their second bottle of wine, but I'm not sure that excuses the fact that he told her that sometimes I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I cried after we had sex."

Nick had been in more training sessions than he could count about suppressing his first reaction, about concealing shock and judgment and anger, but he couldn't stop himself from gasping. "Oh my God, Greg."

"Yeah." Greg was red to the roots of his hair, and Nick thought that he shouldn't have to feel so ashamed. "He'd been talking about me with my mom and with Amelia. I had a long talk with Amelia and eventually she told me that he'd been discussing our sex life with her." Greg bit his lip. "Like, intimate physical details. Like, I wasn't great at sucking cock but I was getting better. That was something that _I _hadn't really talked about with her, and I was completely humiliated. From what she said I got that she had tried to shut Andy up, but he'd just carried on."

Greg shook his head. "She was totally skeeved by the whole thing."

"_I__'__m _totally skeeved by the whole thing," Nick said. "Baby, I'm so sorry."

They were standing a foot apart, and Nick couldn't read Greg's body language; couldn't tell whether Greg wanted him to kiss his hand, or stroke his face, or wrap him in his arms.

"Wilkie's such a fucking star, you know?" Greg said, and he didn't let go of Nick's hand. "I didn't tell him any of the details but he just kept nagging me until the pieces fell into place. Until I realised that, even though I'm so happy with you I can barely stand it, there's a part of me that's waiting for the other shoe to drop. That doesn't know how to be as open as I want to be."

Nick frowned. "Don't sell yourself short. We've talked about some hard stuff, you and me."

Greg tightened his grip of Nick's fingers. "I love you so much. You're always trying to see the best in me."

He shook his head. "The truth is that I got drunk, smoked a bunch of cigarettes, and screamed in your face because I didn't know how to find a way to both be a man and say 'I'm scared, and this hurts, and I don't know how to feel about what Andy said, and the phrase _statutory rape_ makes me want to puke, and will you help me figure it out?' "

Nick threw his arms around Greg then, and pulled him into himself so that he could feel Greg's heart jackhammering in his chest. Could feel the warmth of Greg flat against his body.

"You better believe I'll help you figure it out." Nick said fiercely. "God, I love you so much."

"I love you too," Greg said, and his voice was shaky.

Nick wrapped his fingers around Greg's hip. "Home?"

Greg laughed, clear and familiar, and Nick's heart clenched in his chest_. _"Best idea _ever_."

[And then they lived happily ever after.]


End file.
